USUAL MOB SPOIL PROTEST MARCH IN LONDON

@Jono_Warren

Black bloc letting off smoke flares as they march up Regent St. #26March

Panda wrote:
Carmen, Ritz Hotel also targetted, Ed Milliband made a speech but a middle aged couple complaining about Pensions, apparently the lowest in Europe
said Milliband shouldn"t have made the speech because he was close to Gordon Brown who has caused this mess....good on them!!!!

@ @ianvisits: TUC biscuits attacks Ritz crackers. #march26

@charltonbrooker

Attacking the Ritz? That's just crackers.

carmen wrote:

Panda wrote:
Carmen, Ritz Hotel also targetted, Ed Milliband made a speech but a middle aged couple complaining about Pensions, apparently the lowest in Europe
said Milliband shouldn"t have made the speech because he was close to Gordon Brown who has caused this mess....good on them!!!!

Yes, attacking the Ritz has brought out the Witz on twitter:

@ @ianvisits: TUC biscuits attacks Ritz crackers. #march26

@charltonbrooker

Attacking the Ritz? That's just crackers.

@reddeviljp
head copper onBBC -'the criminality going on on Piccadilly has absolutely nothing to do with the main TU march which passed off peacefully.'
5 minutes ago via web

@tariqsadiq
On coach back home after massive and peaceful #march26 despite nutters in Piccadilly. Kids & families on main march, great atmosphere.
6 minutes ago via TweetDeck

@lucyfrog
Shocking footage of vandals on piccadilly ....press crowding round like hyenas at a kill.
6 minutes ago via HTC Peep

@achrisevans

News coverage of "riots" - bizarre. From what I can see the media have the police surrounded in Oxford Street. Careful Sky #Newseatingiteslf
17 minutes ago via ÜberSocial

@scatatkins

some lunatic just threw a firework at an injured policeman getting medical attention. they really aren't helping the nonviolent image.
30 minutes ago via Mobile Web

@skynewsgatherer

Fire now out. Protesters being contained at Piccadilly Circus. #mar26
3 minutes ago via txt

@AdelDarwish

Gaddafi TV reported TUC London march against cuts & riots as ' protest against the air-raids on Libya'. There is a methodology in madness
6 minutes ago via web

Panda wrote:
Carmen, the Police took a lot of stick last time there was a Protest for "kettling." Now they used the softly softly approach and it didn"t work.
Get the water cannon I say and drown the B****y lot of them. These are not Protesters, they are yobbos and a disgrace to the youth of today that
they can damage a property, attack the police etc and get away with it.

margaret wrote:

Panda wrote:
Carmen, the Police took a lot of stick last time there was a Protest for "kettling." Now they used the softly softly approach and it didn"t work.
Get the water cannon I say and drown the B****y lot of them. These are not Protesters, they are yobbos and a disgrace to the youth of today that
they can damage a property, attack the police etc and get away with it.

Thoroughly agree with you there. I believe 'protestors' such as this should be kept in custody 24/7 only let out to clean up their mess until it's as good as new, then they can go back to their real lives again.

Panda wrote:

margaret wrote:

Panda wrote:
Carmen, the Police took a lot of stick last time there was a Protest for "kettling." Now they used the softly softly approach and it didn"t work.
Get the water cannon I say and drown the B****y lot of them. These are not Protesters, they are yobbos and a disgrace to the youth of today that
they can damage a property, attack the police etc and get away with it.

Thoroughly agree with you there. I believe 'protestors' such as this should be kept in custody 24/7 only let out to clean up their mess until it's as good as new, then they can go back to their real lives again.

I actually agree with them about all these Banks and big Businesses getting away with tax loopholes. Philip Green is a prime example, he owns I think
it"s called Arcadia, Topman, Topshop and Next but because everything is in the name of his Wife, no Tax is paid because she lives in Monaco where
there is no Taxation. Because it"s a Tax loophole he gets away with it, why not close these loopholes, simple really. However, this group of
protesters who are too cowardly to show their faces should be rounded up and photographed for the Press to name and shame them.

Don’t blame the media if your demo doesn’t work

Should you blame the media if your demo doesn’t work? Look at it from the journalist’s point of view for a second.

There are three big dilemmas in reporting any major demonstration where there is violence.

Firstly, how do you balance the visually-arresting actions of a small group with the low-key political festivities of the majority?

Secondly, how do you characterise those people acting violently? Thugs? Anarchists? Break-away group? And a sub-set of this is how do you characterise a sit-in at Fortnums, compared to, say, throwing paint at police?

Thirdly, how do you report the issues rather than the physical demonstrations?


Media Bias?

With today’s TUC rally against the cuts there was a lot of anger from supporters at the way that Sky showed a split screen [see image to the left] which showed Ed Miliband’s speech in Hyde Park alongside some vandalism at TopShop. The BBC also juxtaposed the two in a way that detracted from the Labour leader’s speech.

I think those who complained should first have a word with UK Uncut who decided to occupy or assault various retail outlets at the very same time as the mainstream majority demonstration was trying to get its message out on national TV.

The TV channels were quite right to show the public what was actually happening. Bringing the country’s premier shopping street to a halt is newsworthy. The publicity was also what the various ‘anarchists’ and other protesters wanted. They hi-jacked the TUC’s demo. UK Uncut knew that their often witty and creative neo-Situationalist agit-prop ‘events’ were bound to attract some violence, too. I am writing this at about 5pm by which time the trouble has been relatively trivial, but who knows what will happen as darkness falls?

In fact, the news channels were pain-staking in their commentaries to make it clear that the violent incidents had nothing much to do with the mainstream demonstration. They were also very clear that very few people were either hurt or arrested.

On the second point I think that again, the media made efforts to distinguish between the different direct action groups, but it’s not easy. One BBC reporter kept referring to ‘people dressed in black’ as if that was the definition of a political grouping. It was probably about as accurate as any attempt to dignify them with the description of ‘anarchist’. The reality is that most viewers/readers won’t distinguish between some Brighton art student giving a poetry reading in Fortnums with an over-excited Trot throwing a dustbin through plate glass.

The third point is interesting. Should the media prioritise an issue just because an organisation can get a lot of people into the same place at the same time? On that basis, perhaps we should be paying more attention to immigration in the light of all those EDL rallies.

More seriously, it’s difficult to combine the kind of ‘match report’ journalism that tells you what happened at a demo with a proper debate about the issues.

In the end, this was an impressive turn-out and I am sure it will have an effect beyond the immediate media coverage. It should cheer up those people in the Labour movement campaigning against the cuts and promote solidarity.

It does send a signal that there are a lot of people out there who want an alternative. Whether you think there is one is another matter.

But I doubt it will make much impact on the two-thirds of British voters who think that the deficit reduction programme is justified. Today’s demonstration – both peaceful and violent - was an admirable manifestation of people’s desire to make a political gesture. But I suspect that however the media had reported it, it would not shift the balance of opinion. In fact it has probably put off a lot of people who are genuinely unhappy about current economic policy. It’s time for political movements to think beyond both mass rallies and trashing Topshop.

Panda wrote:
The Leader of the Black Mask group, can"t remember their name,was interviewed this morning reckoned that if the Tax loopholes were plugged £124
Billion would be saved so many of the proposed cuts would not be necessary.He did not condone the damage done and thought others had
infiltrated to cause mayhem but the protest had been successful in highlighting the tax abuse.

The Famous Grouse wrote:

Panda wrote:
The Leader of the Black Mask group, can"t remember their name,was interviewed this morning reckoned that if the Tax loopholes were plugged £124
Billion would be saved so many of the proposed cuts would not be necessary.He did not condone the damage done and thought others had
infiltrated to cause mayhem but the protest had been successful in highlighting the tax abuse.

It still does not warrant throwing lit fireworks into a crowd, some of whom were very small children. They are thugs. Nothing more.

The Black Bloc is a tactic that has been used in demonstrations for years. It is used as a security and safety measure. In it's essential form, each participant of a Black Bloc wears somewhat of a uniform (see the Clothing section). The idea of wearing this uniform is that if every single person in the Bloc looks relatively alike, it is hard for the police to determine which individual did what. For instance, if a Black Bloc participant throws a brick at a store window and runs into the Bloc, she will easily blend in with everyone else. However, if a person wearing normal street clothes happens to throw a brick and run into the Bloc, chances are that she will have been filmed or photographed and later caught by the police.

Also, since Anarchist presence has been a very hot issue in the past few years, law enforcement has been known to film and take photos of random activists and keep files on those individuals. This can lead to problems in the future. It's better to be safe than in jail.